After a break for Thanksgiving, Arrow was back with a new episode last night. This was part two of a two-part special that began the previous night on The Flash, which I took great pains to avoid watching, because that Flash pilot was terrible. In a fit of self-amusement, my sister and I instead watched that old episode of Smallville where Justin Hartley's Oliver Queen joins up with Kyle Gallner's Flash and forms the Justice League, and look, nobody's ever going to point to sixth-season Smallville as being any good, but it was giddy cheeseball fun. Which Arrow is most decidedly not.
Having said that, this wasn't a bad episode. Good to see Barry Allen yelling some sense into Oliver.

Happy Thanksgiving, fellow Americanos!
Just so you all know,
all six of my books—Bias Cut, Lonely
Satellite, DemonCity,
WrongCity, Charlotte Dent, and Preppies of the Apocalypse—are now
available in snazzy paperback editions as well as ebook format. Just in time
for Christmas! If anybody’s interested in signed copies (perfect for gifting!),
email me and we’ll work it out. Otherwise, here's my Amazon author page.
Here are some of the search terms people have used to find
this site over the past six months:

duranalysis home
This site is your Duranalysis home base. Click here for the
full array of my Duranalyses.

As much as I try to relax and just accept Arrow for what it is, it'd be awfully nice if the show's views on women weren't so painfully retrograde. This episode was a doozy in that regard (Thea starting to fall for that DJ who acts like a total dick to her! Felicity going weak over diamonds and couture! Cupid's neurotic obsession with Oliver!).
Illustrated recap below. Click the links for larger, expandable images.

Hey, that was a pretty good episode of Arrow, right? Fast-paced, good action scenes, funny in parts, Oliver was less self-absorbed and undercaffeinated than usual, and Nyssa and Malcolm were in good form.

It's good: dark and twisty, and it moves at a fast pace. It's set in the same universe as WRONG CITY, and a few of the characters cross over, and it expands on the supernatural mythology introduced in that earlier book, but it's a standalone. No prior knowledge required.

In her followup to WRONG CITY, Morgan Richter once again takes readers inside a treacherous, alluring version of Los Angeles, where enigmatic supernatural forces manipulate the oblivious inhabitants from behind the scenes. Felix Dockweiler—former model, current entertainment reporter, and the star of such films as Frat Party USA—yearns for fame at any cost. A callow young Omaha native struggling to make an impact in image-obsessed, celebrity-driven Hollywood, Felix torments, exhausts, and starves himself while chasing after a goal that always lies just out of his grasp. Felix’s fragile status quo is disrupted when a seductive yet violent pair of…

Since much of this video's totally awesome visual style comes from those geometric frames that Russell Mulcahy kept throwing in there, I wanted to preserve that by not adding frames of my own. Also? It's impossible to extract a coherent linear narrative from the images. Just sit back and look at pretty pictures.

Another Duran Duran comic! This time, their video for "New Moon on Monday" is getting the comic book treatment. Since all I'm really doing is digitally altering screenshots from the video in Photoshop, only a microscopic bit of actual artistry is going into this, but still, I think the end result is neat.

Out of deference to the boys, all of whom apparently despise this video*, I've cut their hilariously overlong climactic dance sequence down to a single panel.

*They have nothing to be embarrassed about. It's a thoroughly charming video, albeit with a few moments--i.e. the aforementioned dance sequence--that could've used some judicious editing. It's still one of my favorites.

I don't think this is going to come as news to anyone, but... Duran Duran's "Union of the Snake" is a weird-ass video.

Here's how it looks as a comic book. Nick and (especially) Andy get the short shrift in this, but... y'know, Andy is baaaaarely in the video, and while Nick gets a decent chunk of screen time, he spends all of it sitting and reading a map, which is the sort of thing that really only deserves a single panel in a comic book.

This time, it's Duran Duran's "A View to a Kill" video that's getting the two-page comic book treatment. These are fun. I like seeing the lyrics plastered directly on the images, and if anyone deserves to have his beautiful face emblazoned with "drench your skin with lover's rosy stain", it's Nick Rhodes.

This is really just insanely self-amusing, even for me, but... I was goofing off in Photoshop, and I ended up turning Duran Duran's awesome "Wild Boys" video into a two-page comic book. (You know how I'm always yammering on about wanting to make a weird, glamorous adult-themed cartoon about Duran Duran? This is an obvious baby step in that general direction.) I think I like it -- Simon Le Bon's gloriously bizarre lyrics work really well when emblazoned across Russell Mulcahy's gloriously bizarre images.
A larger, readable version is after the jump:

Side projects! I've been putting in long hours lately building this burgeoning, epic, sprawling wiki for my publishing company, Luft Books. It's still a work-in-progress, and likely will be until the end of time, but it's ready for visitors.
So... welcome to the Luft Books Universe, an interconnected database of plots, characters, places, themes, and everything else that appears in the pages of the novels published by Luft (which is currently comprised of my five books--Bias Cut, Lonely Satellite,Preppies of the Apocalypse, Wrong City, and Charlotte Dent--plus A.K. Adler's Disconnected and Hooked. In addition, my book Demon City will be coming out this fall/winter). It's all cross-indexed for ease of clickability, and it's fun.
As an added bonus, I've gone a little Photoshop-crazy, designing logos and such for all the fake television shows and plays and locations that exist in the Luft Books universe.

At long last! More Duranalysis! My original plan was to
start tackling the Notorious-era videos—“Skin Trade” and “Meet El
Presidente” along with the title track—but… well, look, nothing really happens
in any of those videos, which makes them highly resistant to any attempt
at in-depth quality Duranalyzing (“And then Christy Turlington wanders
around while looking really pretty some
more…”). So I’m speeding ahead to “Do You Believe In Shame?” off of the Big
Thing album.
The video to “Do You Believe in Shame?” was directed in 1989
by celebrated auteur Chen Kaige, who, four years later, would receive the Palme
d’Or at Cannes for Farewell My Concubine. It’s a gorgeous, evocative,
melancholy video—a suitable accompaniment to a gorgeous, melancholy song.
It’s also a familiar song: The official writing
credits on “Do You Believe in Shame?” were adjusted after Duran Duran lost a
legal challenge that claimed it was too musically s…

Well, that’s typical. I just got through saying I don't like talking about my creative process,
and in my very next post, here I am, yammering on about my creative process.
There’s a meme going around Twitter in which authors tag
other authors; tagged authors must then post answers to a few brief questions about their work. You can read their responses by following the #MyWritingProcess
hashtag on Twitter. Last week, author Salem Archer tagged me. Salem and I were
both in competition for this year’s Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, me for Lonely
Satellite, Salem for Moondance in Red. She first
appeared on my radar after she delivered a cold, brilliant, discussion-ending
smackdown on someone who was being a nitwit on a message board, which made me
instantly realize this smart, cool lady was worth knowing. You can visit her
author site here.
This is not the sort of thing I usually do here at
Preppies. Ergo, to avoid alienating my core readership, my answers will be
interspersed wit…

I suppose I should provide a belated ABNA (Amazon
Breakthrough Novel Award) update: After two trips to the semifinals in previous
years (Charlotte Dent in 2008, Bias Cut in 2012), I crashed and
burned out of the quarterfinals this year with Lonely Satellite, thanks
to an unrelentingly, mortifyingly, hilariously scathing Publishers
Weekly review. The reviewer made it very clear he/she despised my protagonist,
Laurie Sparks, which… I mean, obviously I have a knee-jerk distrust of anyone
who dislikes Laurie, because Laurie is a delightful young nitwit, but it’s a
valid opinion. Fair enough. Not my year to win ABNA. Best wishes and
congratulations to the twenty-five extremely talented semi-finalists, five of
whom will be receiving publishing contracts.
Ergh. Moving on. I’m in the middle of writing a new book,
which pretty much owns my soul right now. I find nothing more insufferable than
authors talking about their creative processes, so I’ll spare the details;
suffice it to say I am eat…

Every summer, content tends to get a little sporadic and
sketchy around these parts. I’m going to make a concerted effort to keep up
weekly posts until fresh episodes of Arrow return in the fall, though I
warn you, the topics are probably going to be pretty random and self-amusing.
Since it worked out pretty well last time, let’s take a look at another
fabulous episode of the classic mid-eighties G.I. Joe cartoon, shall we?
Here we have “Skeletons in the Closet”, a thrilling saga of retribution,
espionage, ghosts, ancient cults, mystical creatures, and weird yet heartfelt
attempts at Scottish brogues.
During a failed Cobra operation, the Baroness catches Destro
canoodling in the bushes with a sexy blonde Cobra underling. Because the
Baroness is awesomeness personified, she outwardly shrugs off Destro’s chronic
infidelity, preferring instead to quietly plot terrible, elaborate vengeance
against him.

More whimsy over at the website for my publishing company, Luft Books: I've designed a series of paper dolls featuring Laurie Sparks, the flashy and stylish young hero of my books BIAS CUT and LONELY SATELLITE, complete with some of his more memorable outfits. Download them, cut them out, mix and match his wardrobe and accessories. Fun for all ages!

The dolls are here. And if you haven't read BIAS CUT (2013 IPPY winner, 2012 ABNA semi-finalist) or LONELY SATELLITE (2014 ABNA quarter-finalist) yet, consider giving them a look. Both are available as trade paperbacks or as Kindle-formatted ebooks.

Over at the website for my publishing company, Luft Books, I've created a quick ten-question Buzzfeedesque quiz designed to help match up readers with Luft titles, based upon personality, predilections, and pop-culture tastes. It is all very, very scientific, and I think I showed admirable restraint in only making a scant one-tenth of the questions about Duran Duran. (Fun fact: Every single Duran Duran fan who has taken the quiz thus far has ended up with Bias Cut. This is probably not a coincidence.)

Roy comes out of his coma just as Slade’s super-powered
minions storm the clock tower. He promptly gets pummeled by one of the goons,
which proves pretty decisively that the cure has worked on him. Nice to have
you back, Roy. I’ve missed those giddy pre-mirakuru days when all of his
fights would end with him getting his pert Abercrombie-model ass handed to him
by miscreants. Oliver, Felicity, Diggle and Roy flee from the tower, just as
Lyla Michaels zooms by in an A.R.G.U.S. chopper and blows it to bits with a
rocket launcher.
They regroup at the now-destroyed lair beneath Verdant.
While Felicity and Roy scrounge for injection arrows to fill with the mirakuru
cure, Diggle heads off with Lyla to prevent Amanda Waller from blowing up
Starling City with her drones. Roy has no memory of his madcap pre-coma
escapades (getting kidnapped by Slade, going on a crazed rampage, killing a
cop, beating up Sin, attacking Thea); Felicity lies and assures him he was
unconscious the whole time. It’s …

Laurel is trapped behind rubble after Oliver caved in the
ceiling of Sebastian Blood’s secret lair to escape from Slade’s mirakuru-enhanced
goons at the end of last episode. From the other side of the debris, Oliver
coaches her through the process of firing one of his exploding arrows to free
herself. It works. After Laurel’s rough, unhappy storyline this season, it’s
nice to see her rack up some small accomplishments.
A Deathstroke-suited Isabel squares off against Digg. Just as Isabel tells Digg about her fervent desire to shoot Felicity in the face,
Felicity zips up in a van and runs her over. Women. Always squabbling with each
other, amirite? On the one hand, it’s a well-timed and grimly funny gag; on the
other, it brings up the acrid stench of the way the show pitted Felicity and
Isabel against each other earlier this season (Felicity acted wounded and
betrayed when Oliver slept with Isabel; Isabel accused Felicity of sleeping
with Oliver to advance her career). I have no troubl…

Ah, yes. My love-hate relationship with Arrow seems
to inevitably drift more toward the “hate” end of the spectrum with every
passing episode.
The promo department at The CW has been whipping up a lot of
folderal about the three-part Arrow season finale, of which this is the
first installment. Problem is, nothing much happens here. Basically, it’s an
episode in which Oliver shirks his duties for an hour, then finally decides to
get his head back in the game; it’s a grotesquely inessential hour of
television. I suspect the Arrow creative minds realized they had a dud
on their hands and thus shoehorned this episode in under the season-finale
awning so they could have a handy excuse for the lack of forward momentum:
“It’s okay that nothing happens! It’s the build-up to the season finale,
guys!”

Well. I’m trying to find just the right phrase to sum up
this episode. After giving the matter long and careful consideration, I think
I’m going to go with “shit show.”
Yes. Indeed. ‘Twas a shit show.
So Roy’s still in a coma after Slade used a whole lot of his
blood to create his army of mirakuru-enhanced super-soldiers last
episode. He’s just been lying unconscious on a table in the lair beneath
Verdant for, like, days or whatever, while nobody bothers to seek medical
attention or at least take his shoes off and throw a warm blanket over him. Roy
wakes up and goes utterly berserk. He tears up the lair, scaring the pants off
of Felicity and Digg in the process, then embarks upon a citywide rampage.

My bookLonely
Satellitehas reached the
quarterfinals of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA). As many of you may
recall, I’ve been to this dance a couple of times before:Bias Cutwas an ABNA semi-finalist in 2012,
whileCharlotte Dentwas a semi-finalist back in the
competition’s debut year in 2008. I haven’t won ABNA yet, and I don’t expect
that will change this year (Lonely Satellite is meeting with a cool reception, which is weird; it's like readers maybe aren't looking for a post-apocalyptic alternate-timeline gay romance?), though anything's possible.
If you like, you can head over to Amazon and download the first five thousand words for free. If you’re feeling especially
inspired and/or pro-Morgan, go ahead and post a review. Be sure to check out some of the excerpts
from the other contestants while you’re there; there are a slew of talented
writers in the mix. Like Thomas Mays, whose bookA Sword Into Darknessjust might win it all. I’d be okay
with that. He seems…

As many of you know, the name for this site comes from a very old screenplay I wrote in 1999, which I then adapted into a young adult novel in 2001, which I then adapted into another screenplay in 2008. I have now adapted that second screenplay into another novel, which is now available at Amazon. The gorgeous cover is the work of Morgan Dodge.

It's more a novella than a novel, actually--it comes in at just under 44,000 words, which is pretty short. You can read it in a sitting, probably. It's priced accordingly: only $0.99.

It's a young adult fantasy book. Probably a little grim for small kids. Probably just right for adults.

Here's the synopsis:

Still reeling from a devastating tragedy, Kit Garrett struggles to adjust to his fancy new prep school. When his estranged older sister Ivy starts undergoing a frightening physical transformation, Kit embarks upon a quest to save her. He follows Ivy into a cave near his school and finds himself st…

Thanks to Isabelle’s devious machinations last episodes, the
Queens are in imminent danger of losing their vast family fortune. Couldn’t
happen to a better bunch of amoral jerkfaces. (Not you, Thea. You’re golden.
Oliver and Moira and the late Robert Queen, though? Amoral jerkfaces, all of
you). Their lawyer convinces Oliver and Moira to sign over their assets into a
new trust that Isabelle can’t touch. They’ll need Thea’s signature to make it
legal, which is tricky, seeing as Thea wants nothing more to do with them.
This episode seems to think viewers will feel keenly
emotionally invested in Oliver’s looming financial troubles. This episode is
dead wrong about that.

Slade Wilson, everyone. Slade Wilson.
So Slade picks up Thea, who is heartbroken and morose after
her breakup with Roy. Slade seems kindly and sympathetic at first, acting like
everybody’s favorite uncle and telling her, “Heartbreak is something I know all
too well.” Then he stops the car in a dark alley somewhere and orders her out.
Shocked, Thea runs for it… and promptly gets nabbed by Sebastian Blood.
Total dick move, Slade. I approve.

Best Arrow episode of the season. Nicely done, show.
During a raid to take down a dangerous crimelord, Quentin
Lance ends up arresting fugitive Mafioso Frank Bertinelli, father of Oliver’s
vengeful, mobster-slaughtering vigilante ex-girlfriend Helena (Jessica De
Gouw), who is also known as the Huntress. Knowing Helena is still hell-bent on
murdering her father, Oliver figures Frank’s arrest will draw her back to
Starling City. Since Helena tends to leave a trail of death and destruction in
her wake, Oliver is duly concerned about this.
Newly-sober Laurel is offered her old job back in the DA’s
office. Assistant District Attorney Donner waves away the messy ongoing
disbarment proceedings against her: “I got a buddy on the disciplinary
committee.” Donner is not a very good ADA. Donner asks her to head up
the prosecution on the Bertinelli trial, and while prosecuting her
ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend’s father sure seems like it’d be a conflict of
interest, especially when you consider th…

Huh. Arrow sure doesn’t know what to do with special
guest stars, does it? Michael Jai White, Sean Maher, Ben Browder, I am a fan of
all three of you gentlemen, and I was happy to see you all back… and then you
were all left twiddling your thumbs on the sidelines. Sorry about that, guys.
Maybe the next time they bring you back, you’ll get more to do. Except for you,
Sean Maher, since I guess your brain exploded or whatever.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
It’s a Diggle-centric episode. I like Digg, and he’s been a
bit overlooked this season, so it was nice seeing him get a moment in the
spotlight. Would it have been nicer if they’d given him a better
episode? Egad, yes.

So at the very end of last episode, Slade Wilson popped up
in the Queen mansion, all handsome and menacing, charming Moira and horrifying
Oliver. Great! Outstanding! There’s no possible way this storyline can
go awry, right?

Right. All of the scenes set in the mansion are fantastic.
They’re some of the most fun and gripping stuff this show has ever done. Top
marks all around. Unfortunately, though, the vast bulk of this episode is
devoted to the island flashbacks, and… well, some parts work better than
others. Overall, it’s a strong episode, but the present-day scenes with Slade
are so, so much more interesting than the draggy island crap.

Well. Let's dive into this overcooked mess of gluey instant
oatmeal that The CW is trying to pass off as an Arrow episode, shall we?
The villain du jour is William Tockman (Robert
Knepper), a criminal mastermind with a clock fetish who orchestrates
high-profile robberies with clockwork precision; he’s the type of baddie who
quotes War and Peace for gravitas and stabs insubordinate henchmen with
novelty-sized clock hands. I'm always happy to see Knepper—I dug the sordid brand of
villainy he brought to Prison Break—but his appearance on a show is
never the mark of quality. He played a villain on an alarmingly ghastly episode of Criminal Minds, he played a villain on an alarmingly ghastly season of Heroes, and here... well, it's certainly not the worst-ever episode
of Arrow, but it sure isn’t good. This continues Arrow’s hot
streak of squandering name actors in crummy one-shot villain roles; I’m
thinking of Battlestar Galactica’s James Callis, Farscape’s Ben
Browder, and Fir…

Just in case anyone’s trying to make sense of all the pieces
I’ve been posting here lately, there’s no cohesive theme, unless it’s all under
a nebulous umbrella of “Random Crap I Like.” Ergo, today we’ve got a recap of a
1985 episode of the syndicated G.I. Joe cartoon.
Not just any episode, though: “The Gamemaster” is probably
the very best G.I. Joe episode, though I’m willing to hear arguments in
support of “Skeletons in the Closet”, in which a negligee-clad Lady Jaye storms
around her haunted Scottish castle wielding a golf club while hunting ghosts
before getting offered up by a Druidic cult as a sacrifice to the
multi-tentacled alien creature living in her basement. Oh, and she discovers
Destro is her cousin or something. It’s an amazing episode. Still, I
give a slight edge to “The Gamemaster” because the Joes and Cobra end up
setting aside their differences and working together against a common enemy
and, gosh darn it, I’m a sucker for that sort of thing.

Aside from those pesky Arrow recaps, there’s been
nothing but reviews of old Christopher Collet-Corey Haim movies around these
parts lately. Weird, right? Reviewing Prayer of the Rollerboys last month got me
thinking about Michael Apted’s tense family drama Firstborn (1984),
which, like Rollerboys, also stars Collet and Haim. Tense family dramas
weren’t my genre of choice in 1984 (I was ten; Ghostbusters and The
Karate Kid were more my speed. Come to think of it, Ghostbusters and
The Karate Kid are still more my speed), but I remembered liking Firstborn
anyway. So I took another look to see how it holds up.

There might be worse episodes of Arrow out there, but
there are none I’ve hated with the fiery white-hot wrath I feel for this one. Arrow,
you’ve got to stop turning your female characters—particularly the female
characters who either are currently superheroes (Sara), are predestined to
become superheroes (Laurel), or are the brains behind superheroes
(Felicity)—into neurotic messes. It’s offensive. If you wouldn’t make Oliver,
Digg, and Roy act in neurotic ways, don’t do it to Sara, Laurel and Felicity,
or you’ll end up with people like me calling you out on your overreliance on crappy
gender stereotypes.
We open, promisingly, with Nyssa (Katrina Law), deadly
assassin and high-powered daughter of Ra’s al Ghul, making her way through the
immigration checkpoint at the Starling City airport. When armed officers try to
apprehend her, she calmly slaughters them and saunters off. No complaints about
Nyssa. She’s competent, and, even though she has an emotionally-fraught
plotline, at no po…

Some dude gets himself arrested and thrown in prison, where,
conveniently for his purposes, he ends up sharing a cell with Bronze Tiger
(Michael Jai White). Turns out a mysterious benefactor has paid him a great
deal of money, to be used to provide for his son after his death, to smuggle in
Bronze Tiger’s metal claws. The dude extracts the claws from inside his body
and dies.
Bronze Tiger promptly uses the claws to kill a whole bunch
of guards, then escapes. He meets up with his mysterious benefactor, who turns
out to be a black-market arms dealer. The arms dealer offers to pay him ten
million dollars to break into Malcolm Merlyn’s repossessed mansion and steal
the prototype of the earthquake machine used to destroy the Glades last season.

There are dystopic B-movies about roller-skating teens that
are so bad they’re good (Solarbabies, represent!), and there are
dystopic B-movies about roller-skating teens that are just plain good. Defying
all reasonable expectations, 1990’s Prayer of the Rollerboys falls into
the latter category.Prayer of the Rollerboys, which was directed by Rick
King, takes place in Los Angeles in the near future, following a epic market
crash that left the United States financially crippled and deeply in debt to
various foreign powers. The job market’s been gutted, homelessness is rampant, the top universities have
been transplanted overseas, brick by ivy-covered brick, and violent gangs rule the streets. Chief among the gangs are the Rollerboys, a
gaggle of fresh-scrubbed rollerblading teens with automatic weapons and
insidious white-supremacist leanings. Led by charismatic psychopath Gary Lee
(Christopher Collet), the Rollerboys are both influential and hyper-organized;
for crying out loud, they’…

Hey! You know what? This is a really fun episode! All kinds
of interesting things happen: Roy and Sin team up and create havoc, Slade
debuts his cool new costume, and Laurel—Laurel, of all people—saves the
day, sort of. Or maybe she makes things worse. It’s hard to tell. But in any
case, Laurel gets to do stuff for the first time in a very long while,
and that alone makes this episode noteworthy.
Sebastian Blood visits his mother, Maya, in the asylum to
grill her about Laurel’s recent visit. He then dons his skull mask and murders
her in some never-detailed way; since her death will later be attributed to her
preexisting heart condition, it’s possible he scared the life clean out of her.
Upon hearing of Maya’s death, Laurel, who is still popping stolen pain pills,
asks Quentin to arrange a rooftop meeting with the Arrow. Laurel and Oliver are
both bristly and bitchy to each other at first—Laurel because he showed up
late, Oliver because she sicced a SWAT team on him at their last mee…

Arrow is back from its winter hiatus. Good news
first: This is the strongest episode for Laurel in a very long time. She’s
lively and sneaky and fun to watch, and her storyline actually—wait for
it—helps advance the main plot. Congratulations, Arrow writers. Job well
done. Please keep it up.
Bad news: Well, pretty much everything else, but chiefly
this: Oliver, you are such a dick.

So... the two main characters in my book Bias Cut, Laurie Sparks and Nicola, have Twitter accounts, and since their Twitter handles are named in the book, I did the sensible thing and made sure to claim those handles before the book was published. Laurie is here and Nicola is here. And, y'know, I've had ideas, but I haven't really done much with either account (Laurie mostly tweets drivel, which seems about right, and Nicola really doesn't tweet at all, which... also seems about right). I've been using Nicola's account, half-heartedly, as the official Twitter account for my company, Luft Books. It's all been a little... well, lame, frankly.

Writer. Publisher and owner of Luft Books. An Angeleno adrift in New York City, I've got a BFA in screenwriting from USC's film school, a fiendish love of pop culture, and a Duran Duran lyric for every occasion. Reach me on Twitter or at me_richter(at)yahoo(dot)com.

ACTIVE POSTS

I haven't written one of these in a few years, so some explanation might be in order before diving in. Despite the flippant title, the Strange Sick Sad Career mantle is bestowed only upon actors I genuinely like, such as Jonny Lee Miller and Michael Rosenbaum and Ioan Gruffudd… and, now, Thomas Gibson, who is freaking amazing in his role as ultra-grim FBI unit chief Aaron Hotchner on the CBS crime procedural Criminal Minds. How amazing? Consider this: I voted for Gibson with a clear conscience when he went head-to-head against Fringe's magnificent John Noble in Entertainment Weekly's Under-Appreciated Entertainer of 2010 poll, an honor Gibson went on to win.

So… what’s strange or sick or sad about Gibson’s career? Fair question. After all, he’s spent thirteen of the past sixteen years starring in well-received prime-time network television shows (three seasons on Chicago Hope, five on Dharma and Greg, and he’s presently well into his sixth on Criminal Minds), which …

No U.N.C.L.E. recap this week due to a combination of an overpacked agenda and general inertia, but have no fear:

a) I'll post a new recap early next week, and:
b) it's just going to be that stupid third-season episode where Illya dresses up as the Abominable Snowman for absolutely no good reason, so you're not missing all that much.

This is the backdoor pilot for the short-lived spinoff series, The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., and man oh man, it is terrible.

Illya, dressed in a fancy ruffled tuxedo, poses as an advertising executive and loiters around a swanky party for Caresse Cosmetics, which is in the process of choosing Miss Moonglow, the new face of the company. The party is teeming with pretty ladies; Caresse’s cofounder, Jean Caresse (Mary Carver, the mom from Simon & Simon), asks Illya for his opinion as to which one should represent her company. “Personally, I would prefer a woman of accomplishment,” Illya says. This bit of straightforward common sense alarms Jean, who is a seasoned THRUSH agent. Jumping into action, she grabs a henchwoman and alerts her to her suspicions that a cute blond U.N.C.L.E. agent has crashed their party. Illya snoops around and ends up captured by Jean’s evil brother, Arthur (Kevin McCarthy).